6 - Unearthing Violeta Parra: Counter-Memory, Rupture and Authenticity Outside of the Modern

Summary

MADELEINE BRUMAGNE: Violeta, usted es poeta, músico, borda tapicerías, pinta. ¿Si tuviera que elegir uno de estos medios de expresión cual escogería?

VIOLETA PARRA: Elegiría quedarme con la gente. Son ellos quiénes me impulsan a hacer todas estas cosas.

(MADELEINE BRUMAGNE: Violeta, you are a poet, musician, embroiderer of tapestry, painter. If you had to choose one of these forms of expression, which one would you choose?

VIOLETA PARRA: I would choose to stay with the people. They are who inspire me to do these things.)

Violeta Parra is a name that evokes strong sentiments about nation, culture and the meaning of authenticity. As quickly as an image of her is constructed, a counter-image comes to the fore. Parra has become a supple icon: a communist, a social democrat, an artist, an emotional female, a strong female, a religious singer, a possible atheist, a mother, a depressive, the embodiment of a national culture. At the inauguration of the Violeta Parra Museum in October 2015, President Bachelet stated, ‘Violeta Parra está viva y sigue cuestionando nuestras certezas, remeciendo las ideas fijas sobre nuestra identidad y llamándonos a repensar Chile’ (Violeta Parra is alive and she continues to question our certainties, shaking those set ideas about our identity and forcing us to rethink Chile). While paying homage to Parra's unquestionable creative and intellectual capacity, the museum symbolises an act on the part of the state to capture her image within the national memory.